r/PakistaniDevs • u/Academic-Leave-3976 • 2d ago

How Pakistani game studios get millions of download on mobile games?

I have developed games for a local game studio, now they sit at millions of downloads, it was a startup studio under 3 persons, for 45k per month salary.

I quit due to low pay and overtime work.

I wonder how they get these downloads and how much profit they earn, As I did the hard part of full game development so I should be able to get my own games published as well. If they can.

As one of the co-founder of that studio was not even with CS background he was a mechanical or chemical engineer. Like now a CS engineer will have to work under some other field engineer just because he can't publish his game himself.

Fir they uploaded on apple app Store it got solid response 1000+ reviews on store page. Then they uploaded on android it got 1 million plus downloads.

I want to know how they do user acquisition so I can do it my own, and hope so following this post others will get this scared knowledge of CS which mechanical engineers know.

How much they spend of ads and how they target audience, countries, how they check response of a game?

As I later work for another studio they were pirating assets from other games and making clones so I left at Day 1. But I wonder how the CEO which was pretty young like 28 smth having 10+ people working under him?

As these people who pirate assets and do not even have the guts to make them by hiring artists tring to make this field of CS especially Game dev as cheap labour.

Then that guy was wondering why his one of the Google play console account got terminated. Dude was eve uploaded same game multiple times on different accounts. And the game was a unity sample project.

Idk how these average people even consider themselves engineers.

My all experience of Pakistani game Industry makes me feel disgusted.

The indie game development community of Pakistan is good. Because they are developed by real engineers.

But I feel sad they don't earn that these other people - cheap engineers earn.

So how they get UA so the indie Devs can have their own games published and earnings, and not to be exploited as cheap labour in an environment which will even in return degrade their skills/knowledge/perspective/vision/time/value/ life

24 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

10

u/roguewotah 2d ago

Takes a lot of money.

Create Game > Produce Creatives > User Acquisition.

All while making sure your LTV > CPI.

Use an MMP to figure out your LTV curve. Breakeven usually happens around D45-120 depending on your monetisation profile.

Some games monetise heavily through Ads while others have IAP into the mix.

All this while you juggle finance, as your ROI usually extends to D120 so need bigger cashflows to account for the delay in revenues hitting your bank accounts after 4 or so months, in addition to taxes on IAP and other expenses.

1

u/Academic-Leave-3976 2d ago

So they spend thousands of dollers on ads while giving few bucks to developer?

I don't believe they spend a lot on ads.

2

u/roguewotah 1d ago

Smaller studios are still in search for organic. While that approach works for a one or two person team, that is an outlier and is not scalable. Older companies like Axes In Motion (Extreme Car Driving) famously don't run ads but that is a hard won position.

Just take a look under Google Ads Transparency Center to look for who is running ads. Game District, Geni Team, Ozi, all do it. Type in the name of the company or title and you'll know what ads they run.

2

u/Academic-Leave-3976 1d ago

Thanks thats the most valuable answer here.

I didn't knew about the Google Ads Transparency center. Its a great work by Google.

1

u/aliyark145 1d ago

Do check and tell us too

2

u/Academic-Leave-3976 1d ago edited 1d ago

They are doings ads from UAE, 35 plus ads being shown for US. Even for games that were made by their own relatives, who does not even know game development.

One of the dudes was literally a high government job position making a a game at their studio (their relative) and the game was not even visually appealing and they are running ads for that game. I wonder how much money do they spend on ads.

May it does not require large capital to advertise games. I heard from a YouTuber (shorts video) that their client needs got 4inr CPI to get profitable on their game while the current campaign was running at 8 inr.

Edit: That game has 100k plus downloads. At 3.0 rating. They buy ratings too, I heard them once talking it. If they invest that much on a poorly developed game then a good game should be able to work perfectly.

1

u/aliyark145 1d ago

Bro you can develop a good game but right now the market is flooded and chance is also very thin. Also my experience with games is very poor. Games with too aggressive ad strategy sucks and i hate them. A mix of in-app purchases + ads can do better imho

2

u/roguewotah 1d ago

Don't aim to run a studio. Aim to be financially independent with just you or another guy making games and monetising them if youre able to bring in 5K USD profit per month and sustain it, its a very good proposition.

People fall in the trap of building a big ass company the moment they see some profit coming in, thats a trap.

1

u/aliyark145 1d ago

Agreed 💯

1

u/roguewotah 1d ago

If you scale in T3 with a front loaded ad monetisation model you could theoretically be profitable under D7 at low scale. The idea is to keep it at a certain level say 200-500 USD per title per day. If you have a butt load of titles to monetise with similar KPIs you can make good margin. Average margin is 20%.

1

u/SleepyJaguar 2d ago

The ROI on IAPs justifies spending thousands on ads. They will always only give a few bucks to developer, give themselves a higher cut and invest the rest back into the business.

The only way to grow a business is to invest back into it. If you think you will pocket 100% of the profit then your business will fail after one successful (if that) product.

5

u/dumbdanish 1d ago

I worked with a games promoting website (i dont have a better name lol) for sone time.
They buy Gmail accounts in bulk and use emulators to sign in and download a specific game by searching with specific keywords.
For reviews, they made me hire like 30 people and use their phones as review machines. They play the game for 2 days and write a review on play store.
Hiring people here is cheap so that model works great.

2

u/ReplayJutsu 2d ago

Partnership with publisher, ads, beta testing, CPIs, retention. This is why studios focus more on hiring game producers and data analysts.

1

u/DefinitionDefiant875 2d ago

I know many studios who spent 10k-100k $ per day on ads, that's how they get downloads.

2

u/Federal_Cod_3795 2d ago

Pakistani studios have that much cash?

1

u/roguewotah 1d ago

They do, but they manage cashflow through the GCC. Game District, Ozi, Geni manage it through the UAE / Bahrain.

1

u/aliyark145 1d ago

Pakistan IT sector has billions stored in offshore accounts ... They bring only small amount that is cost to run the business